


This poor Scandinavian hero-worship

by lotesse



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Gen, Recreational Drug Use, Religion, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 10:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So, I mean,” Tony slurs, curling up against the warm solid mass of Thor's chest, “here's what I don't get. You're a Norse god, right?” Thor rumbles an amused affirmative, and Tony feels the vibrations against his cheek. Fuck he's drunk. He's not supposed to get this drunk. He's so fucking drunk and Thor is a Norse god. “So that means that you're conclusive proof in the existence of god. Atheism is screwed.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	This poor Scandinavian hero-worship

**Author's Note:**

> Title from that ass Carlyle; also I ship Steve/Tony and you can maybe tell, even though Steve isn't even really in this story.

“So, I mean,” Tony slurs, curling up against the warm solid mass of Thor's chest, “here's what I don't get. You're a Norse god, right?”

Thor rumbles an amused affirmative, and Tony feels the vibrations against his cheek. Fuck he's drunk. He's not supposed to get this drunk. He's so fucking drunk and Thor is a Norse god. “So that means that you're conclusive proof in the existence of god. Atheism is screwed.”

The upper levels of Stark Tower are still a shambles, but the lower half of the building is fine, and Tony's not waiting for the cleanup crews. Bruce is still shaky and tired from spending so much time mean and green, and come on, face it, Tony's not going to let the guy shlep back to India like that. Bruce doesn't even have any clothes of his own; where he found that buttercup-yellow buttondown Tony can't fathom, somehow it doesn't seem like the sort of thing he would ever buy. Maybe it had been the result of a sartorial drunk-dial. Those had been known to happen. So he'd taken Bruce back to the tower, introduced him to Pepper - who had a meeting in the morning and couldn't stay over, and he didn't mind it when she left or anything, it was fine.

Thor'd taken Loki back up to Norse heaven, whatever. Tony's just glad that weirdly kinky gag/mask hadn't been strapped over his face. He's all for a bit of bondage, but the wild rolling of Loki's eyes had honest to goodness scared him a little. How could you fathom the pain of a bound god?

But anyway, Thor's back pretty soon – apparently all he had to do was dump Loki into their father's hands, done and done. The big guy and his girl tumbled into Stark Tower after dinner, Jane tipsy and tucked in against a disturbingly giggly thunder-god's side.

Therefore the theological problem of said god being in the living room with which Tony was currently struggling to cope. Thor seemed very happy and expansive and intoxicated and was apparently quite content with his current position as the filling in a Foster-Stark sofa sandwich.

“I'm getting that you're not exactly overjoyed,” Bruce says in that quiet steady voice of his - and fuck, Tony's falling in love with the cadences of Bruce's voice, safe and gentle and strong. Bruce isn't drinking, but it turns out Tony wasn't that far off with the “huge bag of pot” idea, and right now the dude is pretty seriously chill.

Bruce looks at him over the rims of his glasses, and Tony is impressed that Bruce has that much ocular control at this point. He's got to admit, that's pretty badass.

“Yeah, no, not really,” Tony says, when he finally tracks the question. “Because. Fuck it, proof of the existence of god. Irrefutable.” He pats one of Thor's very solid, very irrefutable biceps, and forgets his theological frustration for a minute because wow, that's a really nice bicep, plush over iron. Thor's skin is hot, and a soft down of golden hair covers his arms, catching the low late-evening light.

Thor rumbles, “I am sorry, my comrade, that you find such frustration in my existence. I would not have it so. Selvig was quite pleased, I thought.”

“If I was a pagan freak like Selvig I'd be happy too,” he - well, honestly, he's pretty sure he's whining, but whatever. “Instead I'm just a fucking lapsed Catholic and I can't stop thinking that this would have absolutely killed my mother.” He leans back against Thor, looks over unsteadily at Bruce. “Most people don't know that she was religious,” he says, the impulse for confession that always hits him at a certain level of intoxication kicking in right on schedule. “She kept it to herself, you know, didn't think it was right to make some big display out of her faith. 'S why Dad never got it, because why you'd ever do anything and not display it was way beyond the reach of his brain, but she said her rosary every night. In Italian. Just the way her nonna taught her.”

“Bet stupid _Rogers_ doesn't have a problem, he's all about the father son and holy ghost routine, just another fucking trinity.” Tony's thinking of red and white and blue, but the words coming out of his mouth and the ideas in his head don't quite hook up. Not like they were important, though, so he just lets it go.

“My parents weren't religious,” Bruce says, his eyes fathomless and serene. “I had to find everything for myself.”

Tony waves a hand that he means to be emphatic; it doesn't have enough energy behind it to manage more than languid. “Right, but that's exactly what I'm talking about,” he says. “You, like, wandered the world and found your, your whatever, it's not like they made you go to confession and spill all your secrets to some old man who probably liked to screw little boys behind the altar after mass.”

Thor raises a godly eyebrow at that, but Tony can't find it in himself to unpack the reference, it would just make Thor sad.

“I think you've got it wrong,” Bruce says, still so quiet and gentle, god, Tony wants to crawl inside his voice and stay there forever. “It's not the same kind of faith. Not the same kind of god. When I was in India – Hinduism's got the gods-and-monsters stories, but it's not like that. The faces of the gods are metaphors.”

“'The faces of the gods'? Watch out, Banner, you're starting to sound like a PBS special.”

“You're the one who thought it was a good idea to ask a suicide about existential despair,” Bruce bites back, and Tony flinches a little at that one because yeah, he's a fucking jerk, film at eleven.

“Bruce,” he says, and reaches out a hand and then pulls it back again, and Bruce looks at him and shakes his head, but one corner of his mouth is smiling and Tony's reassured that Bruce _already knows_ that Tony's an asshole and is still here anyway.

“Tony Stark,” Thor rumbles into the suddenly-velvet stillness, “what does it mean to you, to be a god?”

“To be more than human,” Tony says. “To be perfect. To be unreal.” He doesn't think about Rogers, instead forces himself to focus completely on Thor and his heat and his muscles and his pretty pretty hair and his impossibility.

“I see,” Thor says. “I am manifestly real; this creates a problem for you. I am sorry for it. I would never willingly be the cause of your distress.”

“God, Thor, it's so hot when you're a great guy,” Jane says from Thor's other side, drags herself up to straddle his lap, and kisses him on the mouth. Tony hadn't been familiar with Dr. Jane Foster before Thor'd show up with her. Astrophysics was one of his peripheral rather than central concerns. She's beautiful, stunning, human and soft and warm, somehow sparkling and brilliant even in repose. Thor is beautiful too in her arms, a dream of impossible power and endless benevolence. You could say he was like a puppy, Thor, kind of a big blond doof, but Tony doesn't think it's anything like that at all. He thinks that Thor is actually so far ahead that he's metaphorically lapped all the rest of them, and they lack the ability to even perceive their own inferiority.

Tony looks away from the god and his beloved, surprised by his own reticence, until Jane releases her holy honeybear and leans forward, forward, closer. She's very close to Tony. When she speaks he can watch the shades shifting in her big soft eyes, brown to green to gold.

“Thing is,” she says, “there's no point in being afraid of it, or ashamed in front of it, because it is what it is. Carl Sagan was right, and Shakespeare, and the whole goddamned universe is apparently full of miracles. My parents didn't take me much to temple, I've never cared much about faith, but Mr. Stark let me tell you I've always been in love with wonder. It was just that the only language of wonder available to me before was science. Now we have another one, and the more we communicate the more we'll get a third that's the mix of the two, and our world is getting so much bigger, more wonderful. We can't let some stupid masculinist size complex get in our way – uh, not that I think any of this has to do with your, um, I'm sure you're perfectly – well ... ”

She's flushed, passionate, sitting there curled in the arms of her god, and Tony wants to have her and be her and not be. He puts his hands on his eyes, pressing the heels into the sockets. Not opening them, not looking up, he says, “It's all right for it to not be easy, Foster. It's all right for people to struggle with fundamental ontological change.”

“You are _very_ drunk, sir, and I think it would be advisable for you to retire now. Dr. Banner, if you would assist Mr. Stark up to his suite?” JARVIS asks, commanding despite the superficial deference of his tone.

Tony breathes, leans his weary head back and lets his eyes stay closed, because JARVIS lives as much behind them as anywhere else, and Tony is tired of looking at the world, of seeing light and motion. “JARVIS,” he slurs, “this is why I love you the best.”

Thor gets up. Going around to stand behind where Tony sits slumped on the sofa, the god of thunder looks down, and Tony looks up and meets his blue, blue eyes, and feels like he's flying. Not falling; flying.

Thor presses benedictatory fingers between Tony's eyebrows.

“Dr. Banner?” JARVIS prods, and Bruce comes to help him up with an extended arm, still beefy and obviously powerful even though he's not green around the gills at all. Beside them, Thor – wow, Thor actually _lifts Jane in his arms_ to carry her to, presumably, their room. Good to be a god.

Bruce shepherds him back to his own room and then slinks back into the shadows of the hallway before Tony can so much as say 'goodnight.' But after his creator has fallen asleep, JARVIS chants the Fibonacci sequence to him, quietly, all through the night.


End file.
